Fragments and Synecdoches
by sarunotoki
Summary: A collection of drabbles and short fics. Most are stand alone, but one or two will be from my existing 'verses. I've rated it M to cover all possible content, but there will be specific rating and warnings at the top of each fic. Enjoy! :RoyxEd:
1. Proportional Offence

**Proportional Offence**

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings:** tiny SPOILER for end of series

Roy was warm. Even drifting on the very edge of sleep he could recognise a _good_ morning. The bed was firm, cradled his body against the mattress like a perfect lover, neither too demanding nor too distant. No old aches or newer, sharper pains interrupted his pleasant, muffled haze. Even his eye had abandoned its strange, invisible tugging and occasional twitch. It was all subdued by the comfortable embrace of the blankets and the mattress and the pillow, the caress of the just-rising sun filtering through the small gap between the curtains.

Still indulging in his half-doze, Roy flexed his muscles, slowly stretched out his limbs. His shoulders rolled in their sockets, his chest and stomach tensed deliciously and the muscles in his arms and legs clenched almost to shaking, moving languidly outward –

connected with another body –

and a crushing grip closed around his forearm, jerked, tumbled him viciously out of his haze and his half-sleep and the bed onto a cool wooden floor. It had been years since Roy had been woken so abruptly but it was always as if no time had passed at all, disorientation choking his nerves and a sudden rush of adrenaline. The General _major_ surged forward, furious _terrified,_ heart pumping too quickly, dark eyes hard _shattered_. He may not have his gloves _he was useless in the rain_, he may only have one eye _the wound in his leg was aching, burning, he could barely stand up any more, let alone walk_, but he wasn't helpless, dammit _he didn't want to die_.

He rose one inch, maybe two, before a solid hit to his chest thumped him hard into the wood again, bruising his shoulderblades and flashing dark white at the back of his skull. His body tensed to rise again but then there was a weight on top of his gut, knocking wind from him that he barely noticed. It hardly mattered when there was warm, sharp metal pressed into his skin, scratching a line of red over his throat in warning. Roy froze. Blinked.

"Edward?"

The blond stared, golden eyes wide and bright and blank, tumbling over amber and ochre. Roy could feel the shaking-tenseness of the thighs wrapped around his sides, could see the frantic wail of the pulse beneath tan skin, could smell the sharp reek that sliced from their pores. Then the body on his jerked, a tiny spasm, and those wild eyes blinked once, focused.

"... Roy?" the eyebrows drew down. "What..." and the younger caught sight of the blade extending from his arm, the line of blood drawn over pale skin and a scarlet drop tracing the curve.

"Fuck." Ed _threw_ himself off, away, scrambled several paces backward on his arse until he was stopped abruptly by the dresser. He stared with a different type of wildness, now, remained trembling-still and panted harshly like a wounded beast. "_Fuck_."

Roy sat up slowly, watching the other with only a touch of a frown. He raised two fingers to his wound, lowered his gaze to glance at bright red screaming on the pale digits. This had been a _good_ morning. The General felt like rolling his eyes, or hitting his head on something. He hadn't remembered there was someone else in his bed, but even worse, he hadn't realised it upon waking. He'd been so comfortable that he hadn't heard the sound of the other's breath, hadn't noticed the different set of the mattress or taken note of exactly _why_ it had been so intimately warm. Hadn't noticed the faint scent that was becoming increasingly familiar, hadn't considered that his bedmate would be as susceptible to remembered horrors as the rest of them.

"Good morning, Edward." He said mildly after a time, raising his eyes again. Any longer and the blond would start fuming that he was being coddled. Regardless of the fact that those large eyes, awash with guilt and apology and horror, were just begging to be comforted – no, that wasn't true, was it? On anyone else, they would be a sure cue to move, to wrap warm arms around that body and whisper words of assurance and acceptance. Forgiveness. On anyone else, those eyes would have dimmed and shattered long ago. On Edward Elric, they churned, tore, screamed and _flared _and then gathered into a firmer mass. A layer of hard ash on lava.

Edward slowly released a breath.

"Sorry." Straightforward, blunt, but no less sincere for its shortness. The golden eyes slipped to the accusing red on translucent white and his mouth tightened a moment. "Old habits." And that was as much explanation as Roy would get for the very nearly successful attempt on his life.

"Understandable." He replied in much the same tone.


	2. Unlike Fate

**Unlike Fate**

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings:** Unhappy ending

There was, in reality, very little that Ed could do that Roy wouldn't forgive him for, whether Ed believed it or not. Equivalent exchange already dictated that Roy accept whatever Ed happened to throw at him and just be damned grateful that it was _him_ Ed had chosen to throw it at, regardless of the fact that Roy loved Ed more than his own life.

This, though... there could be no forgiving this.

"Ed." His voice was quiet, barely a sound at all, but it was like a shot in the small room, tearing through the thick air and – Roy knew by the way he stiffened – lodging with vicious accuracy at the base of Ed's spine.

"Go away, Roy." The boy rasped, not even turning around. He cleared his throat, unused to the itch of the vibrations, and returned to his work.

Roy barely kept from grinding his teeth together.

"What are you doing?" How dare he, how _dare_ he –

"What does it look like?" He didn't pause this time, his arm moving sluggishly in an arc across the wooden floor and dragging a line of harsh white behind it.

"It looks like you're being a damned idiot." Roy spat, the anger working its way through him, too hot and too sharp and too raw. Because he may not know those sigils, may never have seen those books, but he knew that smell and that unnatural steadiness of hand and that slope of shoulders like anything was better than bearing that weight any more. "Seven years, Ed, you can't think some array you came up with in a fortnight is going to –"

"I came up with this eight years ago." Ed interrupted without heat, his words slow and toneless. Roy's body froze from the inside out and Ed just kept working, filled the room with the grating _cshh_ of chalk on wood like the sound of his blood spilling out. "Before I got the automail, before you came, I knew Al couldn't, shouldn't have to live in that tin can, so I worked it out. I just needed to make some adjustments because – but it's done now."

Don't do this – "Do you think it'll work?"

A shrug.

"Close enough, anyway."

"Ed –" _Please_ – "He wouldn't want you to –"

"Like Hughes wouldn't have wanted you to?" It should have been a snap, a growl, a hiss, anything but that dead voice that was nothing at all. "Like Winry's parents wouldn't have? You of all people should know how selfish this is."

Ed shuffled around to a better angle, bent back over the array again.

"Were you going to tell me?" Roy demanded tightly, his fingers aching where they were curled into too-tight fists. "Were you going to tell anyone?"

"Why?" A moment of abrupt silence as Ed lifted the chalk, moved to start on another swirl of damning symbols, and Roy felt the sudden fear like the punch of an automail fist to his chest. Because when he stopped – "So you could talk me out of it, stop me? We both know you can't."

"Maybe so when you went missing, I wouldn't go mad for looking." God, he wanted to _scream_, but his voice wouldn't rise above the rough choke because he couldn't seem to get enough air and how could he do this to him? "Maybe so I'd know I'd helped if I could. Maybe so you could say _goodbye_ like it mattered –" No. He hadn't come here for this, he wasn't going to _beg_ – but Ed had stopped, was turning toward him like every inch of movement was too much effort and _looking_ at him, with gold eyes that weren't ever supposed to look like that.

"I'm sorry." Still no emotion, but – a flicker of something, just in the eyes... "You know I..." His gaze skittered away, flicked jerkily over the lines of the array before darting back again. "It mattered. Matters. But I can't – you wouldn't want me like this, anyway, Mustang, and we both know it."

"Don't you dare make this my fault." _I'd want you any way, please don't_ – "_We both know_ this has nothing to do with me."

"Roy –"

"No." _No no no_. "I don't want to loose you, and I wish – that I was enough. For you." Ed opened his mouth but Roy didn't pause long enough for him to draw breath, refusing to let himself not say this. Even if it felt like he was ripping his own heart out. "But I know that it's something you have to do. That Alphonse comes – has always come first. I understand. I just wanted – a goodbye. That's all."

"Roy." Barely a breath, but some of the deadness had left his voice, his eyes, and _god_ Roy wanted to scream, or cry, or anything that wasn't stand here and tell his lover it was alright to leave him – "Thank you."

They didn't kiss. Ed didn't stand and Roy didn't move forward, because if he touched Ed he wasn't sure he'd be able to let him go. And after a moment, Ed turned back to his work, signing his life away in strokes of glaring white.


	3. Essential Tragedy

**Essential Tragedy**

**Rating:** R

**Warnings:** Angst, mentions of sex

The light cuts through the curtains, slashes bright and harsh across the bed, curves and glints like the blade of a sickle pressing into his skin. There's no red on the sheets but it feels like there should be, feels like he's been shredded into ripe petals and scattered all over this house and this bed and this man.

This man, who is cold as frosted stone until he touches him, as distant as a myth until he kisses him. This man, who is the only thing that holds him together when the cracks run too deep to heal. This man, who is half broken already and looks as delicate as new snow in the relentless morning light, eyes closed and breath steady and arm draped innocently over his waist.

Ed wants to tear the light off his skin, wants to rip it apart and throw it away and bury it forever in the dark where it can't do this to them.

He's woken to this sight over a hundred times already and it's always the same, always new, always the most incredible thing he's ever seen. It isn't just – he can admit this now, even if it's only in his own head because maybe it's the last time he'll be able to look at him and know this – it isn't just having the comfort of a warm body, having someone touch him like maybe he deserves more than he was ever willing to want for himself. It's having Roy, being touched by Roy, being wanted by Roy. It's Roy.

Beyond the useless peace of the bed and the false safety of the room and the wrenching comfort of Roy's scent, the sun rises higher, silent as an assassin.

He wants to say something, _needs_ to say something, but the words won't come. There was nothing last night, when they were tangled and twisted together, throbbing, pulsing, rocking into each other and trying to get more, more, closer, _more_. There was nothing when they fell apart, when they both lay panting and the dark sunk thick into him, pressed him into the bite of all their eggshells under his back.

There is nothing, now, as the dawn shatters around them and the moments pass and pass and pass to the steady beat of Roy's heart.

_I'm sorry_, he doesn't whisper into the silence, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_...

There's too much light, bursting violent and savage through the curtains, and Ed can't close his eyes to deny it because they're fixed on Roy, alive on Roy, lost on Roy Roy Roy. He's never wished for the night before, never realised it could be anything but cold and shadows and screams until there was the moon-whiteness of Roy's skin, the moon-darkness of Roy's eyes, the moon-strangeness of Roy's regard.

He's never wished for nightmares, for the sick churn of shame when Roy wakes him with cool, knowing hands, but there's sunlight cutting into him and he knows that this is the last moment, now.

He slides across the mattress, slips out from under Roy's arm and Roy's sheets and Roy's heat, and shivers at the chill of the light touching his skin.

There is nothing.

His feet find the floor and his arms push him up and he feels like he's falling. Each piece of scattered clothing comes to his body like the ground rising up and he wants to beg, to plead _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_ but he can't, the words won't come and maybe he'll be broken when he lands but he can't survive if he has to fall twice, it isn't his life to give and he _can't_.

The door opens soundlessly and he hesitates, for the bare breath of a second, imagining –

Not when he wakes; Ed's never there when he does, anyway. Not for weeks, because Ed's supposed to be leaving for a mission six days away and Ed never did get very good at reporting in when he should. So then, when the Captain Ed's supposed to meet gets sick of waiting and calls headquarters, eyebrows drawn and jaw tight and voice sharp and.

Roy's face. A flash of concern in his dark eyes, in the way his hand tightens on the receiver – before he realises what Ed's done and that stillness slips over him, as quick and easy as dying.

The door closes behind him with a _tkk_ like the prick of a kiss, and for a moment the silence vibrates with _I'm sorry_ and _I wish – _and _I love you_.

But the sun sharpens into the day, and the words fall apart on the light.


	4. Dissimilar Trouble

"Roy Mustang?" Roy – blinked, tried to rub his eyes in a way that didn't look like he'd only just gotten out of bed and was really rather wishing he was back there because he hadn't had nearly enough sleep and what the hell time was it, anyway? Not late enough for a brisk knock on the door (and another, and another while he was dragging himself up from the mattress) and nowhere near late enough to open it and find... this. A mismatched pair of severe young woman and scruffy young man with sharp, expectant eyes and hesitant, curious eyes and – oh, the woman had asked a question.

"Yes...?"

---

Roy sat at the table, trying not to stare at the scruffy young man on the other side of it. He kept his hands curled firmly around his coffee cup, refused the twitching in his fingers that urged him to tap them restlessly on the smooth porcelain. Because –

The young man – kid, really, only fourteen years old – wasn't as scruffy as he first appeared. Taken away from the strict lines of the severe young woman's suit, he just looked... young. A little tired, a little sullen, a little nervous, but not necessarily troublesome or volatile – unlike a certain other teenager Roy knew.

Which was probably good, considering _this_ kid was his son.

"Do you..." Roy started before he'd really thought about what to say, trailed off. He didn't usually feel the need to fill in silence with whatever first came to mind – _usually_, he was the one making the silence – but the sound of their breathing was starting to press in on him, a tangible weight on his lungs, his skin. What the hell did you say to a kid who had been left on your doorstep all of ten minutes ago and was apparently your son?

After a long, oppressive silence that echoed Roy's ineptitude back at him (in a mockery of his own voice that sounded suspiciously like Fullmetal), he settled on, "Were you living in Central before?"

The severe young woman – Elizabeth Reynolds, apparently – hadn't been particularly forthcoming with the details, except to say that he was the kid's father and the kid's mother was dead and so the kid was his responsibility, and have a pleasant day.

"No." The – his son said, flicking his eyes (dark and slanted like Roy's own, but lighter and rounder as well, making the kid look more exotic than foreign, and Roy thought that if he had to have a teenage son appear from nowhere with a tale of a dead mother Roy no longer remembered, at least he'd made a good one) up to Roy's for barely a moment before dropping them back down to his drink. "In Celle. Near West City."

Well that was informative. Roy said, "Oh."

And they lapsed back into silence.

---

Roy didn't register the footsteps at first, caught up in _dear god, I have a son_, not until they hit the bottom of the stairs and he realised –

"Roy? What are you –?"

Edward. Naked, except for a pair of dark drawstring pants that he hadn't alchemised small enough and hung so low on his hips that it was nearly (nearly: _was_) indecent. Roy had never said anything – why would he, when it meant he could admire the jut of Ed's hipbones and the suggestive dip down and the occasional flash of bronze hair...?

Only now he was wishing he _had_ mentioned it, had stopped Ed wandering around looking like a ravished young god _months_ ago, because – _fuck_ –

"Fuck." Ed stopped a step inside the doorway, his hand still raised to the decadent tangle of his hair and his eyes fixed on the kid. Roy's son. "Who the hell are you?"

Roy's _son_.

Who was staring back at Ed with something a little like shock and a _lot _like horror.

"Ed." Gold eyes swung to his and he saw his own fear there, his own horror, his own sheer _nausea_ because Ed thought they'd been discovered, but he didn't know how much worse it was... "This is – my son. Samson."

Complete. Silence.

"Your son?" Ed repeated finally, flicking his eyes between them like he was reading their DNA off their faces. And then, "Huh," in a thoughtful grunt, like it all made sense while Roy and – Samson stared at him. "I didn't know you had a kid." He added as he resumed his path into the kitchen, clapping to heat the coffee pot up before pouring himself a cup (and god, Roy had gotten his cup down without even thinking about, left it waiting on the bench where Ed could reach it like a fucking declaration). He set it on the table with a careless thump – and then just flopped down into a chair with all the cheerful disregard that he displayed every other Saturday.

"Neither did I, until this morning." Roy said, belatedly remembering that Ed had not-asked a question. He'd really like to not-ask one himself, something along the lines of _can't you see he's only a few years younger than you? Don't you _see_...?_ but he was too afraid of what the answer would be, didn't know whether it would be worse for Ed to say _yeah, fuck, I do get it, you really are a pervert_ or for him to say _no, I don't _see_, what the hell's changed since you came in me last night, huh, bastard?_

"Huh." Ed said again, turning his too-observant eyes back to the – back to Samson, and lifting his eyebrows when the kid just stared back. "Your dad's manners are shit, sorry. I'm Ed." And he stuck his hand out, like this was a normal day, a normal situation, normal people having a normal chat and nothing life-shattering or disturbing about it at all.

Though he supposed on the scale of Ed, who had a metal brother and a State Alchemist's watch and performed alchemy with a clap, this was probably the closest to normal he'd ever come.

"I – Samson. Sam." Sam replied automatically, seeming to reach out against his better judgement to return Ed's firm handshake with floppy teenage awkwardness.

"So, what happened?" Ed asked, as tactless as ever, taking a drink from his mug. "You run away from wherever, or what?"

"What? No, I –" Sam stopped, scowled, and Roy had to admit there was something to Ed's bludgeon-it-until-it-gives-in-or-breaks method because that was the most emotion the kid – his son – had shown since Roy had opened the door. "My mum died and they dumped me here." It wasn't a snap, it was too sullen and intimidated-by-Ed for that, but it was a better attempt than some had made while pinned with those animal eyes.

Instead of snapping back (_actually_ snapping; Ed didn't waste time on things like being intimidated), Ed just blinked, his eyebrows jumping upwards towards his hair.

"They can do that?" He asked, then, "Wait, who?" and Roy really should have come up with something to say by now instead of sitting here watching his – son and his lover talk like they weren't all but the same age. Or like they very much were.

"Social Services." Sam said, trying to hold onto his scowl even as it mutated into more of a confused frown. "The – hospital called them, I guess."

"Your mum was sick?"

"Yeah." Expressionless again, but the mumbled word was familiar enough even in a different voice that Roy's gut lurched sideways.

"Mine too." Ed said, calm and serious and nothing like a teenager only a few years older than his lover's son.

Roy wasn't sure who was more startled, him or Sam, because Ed could and would avoid the subject of his mother even under torture – and Roy knew very well what being faced with Ed was like if one wasn't prepared for him.

After a moment trying to pull his eyes away from Ed's and failing, Sam asked, "She die?" the words dragging up and out of him like he couldn't not.

And Ed said, "Yeah." like just that single syllable meant everything more than it did.

"...Oh." Sam said. Not sorry; he'd probably had enough apologies of his own in the last week to know not to offer his own.

"Yeah." Again, shrugging like it was just, y'know, whatever. Roy wondered how he'd ever thought he was anything _but_ a teenager.

Like his son.

Oh god.


	5. Life Like Radios

"Your uncle," Roy said, slowly, like he could postpone the reality of what he was seeing, "has a lot to answer for."

The little girl, all early-morning grey eyes and late-morning smooth skin and mid-day bright hair, grinned up at him from amidst the messy scatter of parts that used to be his radio.

"He says you shouldn't use things if you don't know how they work." She said, holding a hand up and out to him. The shape of her face, the colour of her eyes, the short scuff of her hair was more Al than anything, but the too-innocent expression was pure Ed – and so he took it, of course, let her pull him down to sit cross-legged beside her like he was much younger than he was, and paid attention as she pointed out all the different components and explained what they did, where they went, which part they attached to.

"See?" She raised one lonely cone of a speaker, and he obligingly tilted his ear to it, made a show of listening to the silence inside it that wasn't much of a show at all. "It doesn't do anything by itself. If it's not attached to the other pieces, it won't work."

No, it wouldn't. Roy remembered the first days after the accident, Ed curled up on the sofa under a blanket like that could stop the feeling of his guts falling out. His eyes had been flat, blank, dulled from gold to dirty bronze, and he'd just stared into the fireplace until Roy had slipped his arms under him, lifted him, carried him to the bedroom where he could hide in the dark, limp and heavy and still like a corpse like his brother like the world. Roy remembered the first months after the accident, Ed eating and drinking and walking and pissing but still not seeing, still not talking, still not _working_.

It had been Dani who'd brought him back, who'd been the first spit-and-paperclip repair that let Ed pick up static again amidst the silence. Roy had gotten up to check on her in the dark of the too-early morning – not because she'd been crying, but because she hadn't, because she was Ed's last living family and the _what if_ of her silence woke him more often and more terrified than any needy wail – and instead he'd found Ed, crouched next to her cot to see through the wooden bars, one finger stretched through between and caught in the tiny curl of her fist. _I'm sorry_, he'd been saying, so quiet they were more twisting breaths than words, _I'm sorry_ and _I love you_ and _your da was the best person I've ever known and ohgod I miss him_ –

Dani was six, now, and Ed was cobbled together with tape and string and odd-fitting screws. Sometimes a piece would fall loose, would leave Ed pale and small and staring again until they could find a way to coax him back, patch cardboard over the hole and hope it would keep Ed's insides from spilling out a while longer. It was always a temporary fix, but they lasted longer than they used to, especially if Dani applied it with her father's smile.

"Morning." Ed said, and Roy turned to find him leaning against the doorway, eyelids still weighted half-closed and hair in a scattered tangle and dark shorts and singlet in place like they had been since they'd had a new baby in the house and he hadn't had the energy to pull them on himself. It had been nearly ten years since the first time they'd kissed, and he was still the most incredible man that Roy had ever seen, touched, known.

"Afternoon." Roy returned, unable to help the smile curling up his mouth and not trying. Saturday had never really been his favourite day of the week, not since he was young enough for it to mean _nothing to do_ instead of _two days in your own company unless you find something someone to do_, but he'd long learnt that Ed reshaped the world with little more than willpower and a passing thought; now, he could live his life out in Saturdays and never know a moment of discontent. Because now he had this, Ed, who always looked a little worn at the end of the week, pressed between bartending at night because he couldn't bear to close his eyes on the dark and trying to get what he could during the day with the house empty and echoing around him – and who came downstairs on Saturdays after six hours straight sleep looking bright and newly gold like sunlight on rain.

"What're you doing?" He asked, and Roy felt the low husk of his voice like a touch, all the way down his spine into his kidneys. Unfortunately, it also reminded him – that he was sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child, dressed in only his grey sleeping pants at one in the afternoon, with the imminently important parts of a dismantled radio in his hands and a collection of slim screwdrivers set up in a convenient row between his toes.

"Examining the radio." Roy said when it became clear that Dani was too absorbed in her work to answer. "Someone mentioned knowing how things worked in order to use them."

Ed smiled, slow and soft and quiet. "Did they?" He murmured, and stepped forward to join them.


	6. Dissimilar Trouble II

Author's note 10/03/11: Hi there. Obviously I'm not usually much of an author's note author, and any of you following me know I haven't posted anything here in a while. I just wanted to (soften you up with fic) let you know that I have offered myself up for auction with Fandomaid, to give fic to anyone who 'bids' on me and donates to the Japan relief effort. It's scary, and ongoing, and unfortuantely this is all I can do, but I hope you'll help me out with it. You don't have to give a lot - every 1AUD gets you 100 words, and every 1AUD counts. The link to my thread on the site is here: .?thread=48692#t48692. To pre-show my apppreciation, here is the much-asked-for second installment of Dissimilar Trouble. Thanks, everyone.

Sam wakes to yelling and grits his teeth, turns over and stuffs his head under his pillow. It only took one time to learn that he really, _really_ doesn't want to hear what they're saying.

"– not fucking when he can hear-!"

"You think _I_ want to? I'm the one with a kid dumped on me–"

"He's not – don't say that! You – _shit_, you bastard, how can you-? He's _your kid_, you're his dad and _his mum just died_ and even when I thought you were a bastard I didn't think you were –"

"-Ed, Ed!"

"Let _go_, piss-fuck wanker-"

"Ed, please–"

"_Fuck off_ don't pretend you didn't mean it, I _know_ –"

"..."

"I don't – he's your kid, you can't not be his dad. Even, even if you're a shithead bastard that fucks off because it's – easier, or whatever, that doesn't make you any less his dad. Jus' makes you a shithead bastard of one."

"..."

"Fuck, it's not about _me_ –"

"..."

"You gotta _try_, Roy."

"..."

"He's got half your genes, of course he's gonna be a shit. If you'd thought less with your dick and used a condom in the first place, this wouldn't've happened."

"..."

"You're welcome. Now go to sleep. Maybe if you're good I'll blow you in the morning."

He remembers his mum commenting on the youngest state alchemist when it was announced in the papers. _Twelve_, she said, disbelief and disapproval, and after a moment she'd looked up at him eating his breakfast across the table and smiled over the mess he'd made. _Don't get any ideas, mister_. As if he didn't already find his compulsory alchemy class baffling and, worse, boring.

_I want to be a nurse_, he said between bites,_ like you_.

_Don't you want to be a doctor?_

But he'd heard the stories of the doctors at the hospital where she worked, and he didn't want to be _arrogant_ or _misogynist_ or _imbecile_; even if he didn't know what the words meant yet, he knew from the face his mum made that they weren't good. So, no, he didn't want to be a doctor. He still doesn't, even though he's older and he gets that becoming a doctor wouldn't make him like _those_ doctors, but... but his mum was a nurse. And sometimes when he walked to the hospital after school he'd finish doing her rounds with her, and he saw – she made people _better_. The doctors messed around with people's insides, took things and put things in, but it was his mum that looked after them, that made them smile through the pain later.

He did learn not to tell other people, though. The first time he announced it in class the kids had laughed and the teacher had let them. Because of course a _boy_ couldn't be a nurse, and if he wanted to... well, the kids had called him Samantha until his mum died and he didn't go to school there any more.

He hates that he can't bring himself to be relieved about getting away from that, but the truth is he'd change his name to Samantha and not care a shit if it brought his mum back.

A knock on the door, stilted and hesitant like it would rather him not hear, not at all like his mother's yell from the kitchen, _Get up for breakfast or starve, my son_.

He clears his throat, and his voice still comes out rusted on the edges. "Yeah?"

Pause.

"It's seven thirty. Sam."

"Cool. I'll... be up in a sec."

Silence, and then footsteps moving away from his door. His dad's footsteps. His _dad_. He still hasn't quite processed that; the word is baffling to him. _Dad_. He hadn't known he'd made a shape of one in his mind until there was this man who'd fathered him and didn't fit. His friends' dads had been – well, married to his friends' mums, and _there_, and not fucking kids their kid's age –

Sam takes a deep breath, lets it out.

Mustang isn't – a paedophile. Maybe. He certainly isn't taking advantage of Edward – the Fullmetal alchemist, who's more than halfway famous and who Sam's been reading about since he was ten as if the newspaper articles were short adventure novels – because from what Sam's heard through his door despite trying not to, Mustang's totally whipped. And – and...

"You can't tell anyone." Edward said, silver-limbed and golden eyed and half-mythical to Sam still, standing in the hallway outside Sam's new bedroom and trapping Sam inside.

"What?"

"About – about me and him." The blush rose up in Edward's cheeks and Sam – stared, horrified. Edward shifted uncomfortably but his eyes didn't move one millimetre from Sam's, and Sam, caught like a fly in honey, couldn't move, couldn't look away. "He's still my commanding officer, and he could – he'd get in a lot of trouble, if anyone knew, so you can't – you're his son, you're family, you can't –"

"I won't." Edward opened his mouth – to insist or make sure or threaten, whatever, and suddenly Sam didn't care. His mum was dead and apparently he'd had a dad all along that his mum hadn't felt the need to tell him about and he'd been _dumped_ here, into _this_, and as long as their fucking didn't have anything to do with him _it_ _didn't have anything to do with him_. "I don't have anywhere else to go, okay? I won't. Like I'd want to tell anyone anyway that my dad's – _that_."

Wrong thing to say.

He still wasn't sure what he'd meant by that – gay or a paedophile or just _not right, not mine, can't be mine_ – but Edward didn't seem confused at all. He was suddenly close without moving, like a lion at the zoo whose cage has disappeared.

"Don't." Sam's brain, blank with shock, stuttered _okay_. "He's not – I get that this is shit for you, I get that, okay, and that sucks, but don't you _dare_ – he's a good man. He's a good man and he's mine and you don't get to hurt him just 'cause you're scared. You don't know shit about it."

Silence. And then, the only thing Sam could think to say in reply that wouldn't get his head torn off, "'M not scared." in a sullen mumble.

"Bullshit." So sure that for a moment Sam accepted it, obviously he'd just never realised it was bullshit – and then, low in his guts: anger.

"I'm not scared." How dare Sam? How dare _Edward_, the kid who was _fucking his dad_ and telling him what to do like he was – "You're not my mum and you're not any kind of fucking _dad_, either, whoever you're fucking, and you don't get to tell me –"

"_I'm not a girl_." Red-faced and yelling, and Sam felt a thrill of satisfaction (and fear) run up his spine. "And fuck if I want to be your fucking _dad_, I feel sorry for Mustang he got you as a kid –"

"What, as opposed to you as a kid?"

Redder and redder, the same colour as the coat he wore like a shield.

"_Who are you calling so short a mouse wouldn't notice him if he were made of cheese-?_"

Edward, Sam has concluded, is insane. And it isn't fair that he has to deal with starting a new school as well.

Reluctantly, Sam gets up.


End file.
